CHAPTER 4

“Breach of Confidence”

In the pages of her diary actress Fanny Kemble frequently pondered the subject of enslaved people and honesty, debating whether the people enslaved on her husband’s plantations could be trusted or not. During her stay in Georgia, Kemble also spent a great deal of time with an enslaved man named Jack. Kemble recalled that one day she asked him how he would feel about freedom, to which he “hesitated” before protesting, “Free, missis! What for me wish to be free? … me no wish to be free, if massa only let me keep pig!” She interpreted this to mean that he was afraid to “offend” her if he confessed a desire to be free or expressed “the slightest discontent.” Instead she believed he hoped to win her “favor,” even if that required “strangling the intense natural longing” for freedom that “glowed in his every feature.”¹ Kemble clearly thought Jack was lying, denying an “intense … longing” for liberty that his face could not conceal. But Kemble was not displeased by this lie; rather, she was touched that he would suppress the truth to appease her and curry “favor.” Jack may have “hesitated” to say how he felt about freedom, but he did not pause when insinuating that he could be sated without manumission for the price of a pig. It is impossible to know how Jack felt about liberty or if he was deliberately trying to flatter his mistress with a performance of contented fidelity, but it is evident that Jack understood this conversation to be a negotiation of loyalty and trust.

Regardless of whether Jack was genuine in his sentiments he deftly turned a potentially contentious discussion into a bargaining opportunity. The request for a pig was seemingly unrelated, but Jack was implicitly suggesting a trade: his continued loyalty, in return for permission to keep livestock. Jack’s quick response shows that enslaved people became adept at performing the role of trustworthy slave, relying on established scripts to successfully navigate loaded interactions with slaveholders. However, enslaved people like Jack also knew that feigning loyalty was a gamble. Faithfulness could help an enslaved person avoid future punishments, earn them a pig, or other material benefits, perhaps even freedom. Or they could gain nothing. Worse, they might be perceived as liars and lose the currency of trust.

The way that Jack and Kemble responded to one another illustrates a great deal about the affective bargaining that occurred between slaveholders and enslaved people around questions of trust and sincerity. Though Kemble did not intend to test Jack’s loyalty with her inquiry, it had that effect. She questioned his honesty, but she saw his deceit as an attempt to please her, which flattered her enough that he still succeeded at being seen as faithful, if not honest. However, other slaveholders were less favorably inclined toward enslaved people they viewed as deceitful or untrustworthy. This passage highlights the paradox inherent to relationships built on coercion: distrust between slaveholders and enslaved people was rampant, yet for all involved there were numerous incentives to establishing trust. The writings of former slaveholders and enslaved people detail a litany of mutual mistrust and broken promises. Though trust was essential to the daily interactions of slavery, it was a nebulous process to fabricate it.² When trust was established it was usually temporary, threatened by betrayal, and highly contingent on the space in which it was created. As a result of this instability mistrust between slaveholders and enslaved people persisted and had far-reaching impacts on the social, legal, and political landscape of the South.

Though enslaved people and slaveholders had profound distrust for one another, trust was nonetheless crucial, facilitating the many daily exchanges that took place between them. For slaveholders building trust, even if only briefly, helped them manage the daily operations on their plantations; it protected their investments, it enriched their coffers, and it could save their lives. For enslaved people knowing when to lie, when to tell the truth, and when to be (or act) loyal could also be a life-or-death issue, helping them survive bondage, obtain benefits, avoid punishments, and even escape enslavement. Mistrust was forged in the crucible of broken promises and emotional politics of slavery, so making trust required time and familiarity. Sociologist Trudy Govier defines trust as a set of “expectations” that includes the assumption that a person who is trusted is not a threat, while acknowledging that trusting another person inherently involves “risk and vulnerability.” This theory of trust helps explain why slaveholders and enslaved people were both so concerned with creating or feigning trust: to reduce both danger and fear, even temporarily.³ Slaveholders valued trust, so they sought ways to ascertain and reward loyalty and punish deceit. Meanwhile many enslaved people sought the benefits of being trusted, even as they continued to mistrust members of the slaveocracy.

This chapter examines how trust and loyalty were hindered and fostered in the antebellum South, and how they functioned in the daily interactions between slaveholders and enslaved people. The chapter also delves into the value and fungibility of loyalty in the slave South, and it reveals the rewards and risks involved in trusting, lying, and breaking promises. Master-slave relationships were riven by deep distrust, but trust and honesty were concerns among enslaved people as well. Enslaved communities built trust and disciplined the untrustworthy through their own established customs and practices that were taught to children at a young age and kept concealed from slaveholders. Finally, the chapter focuses on the trust issues that fugitive slaves and newly freed people faced, as runaway attempts in particular show how trust could help enslaved people escape bondage, but mistrust issues also followed them to freedom.

The antebellum period was an era that was greatly concerned with sincerity. In an article about charlatan doctors in DeBow’s Review the author, “Dr. D. McCauley,” declared, “If anything marks the present age, it is the prevalence of imposture, and the very great readiness with which men and women … allow themselves to be beguiled.” The doctor believed that deception and fraud had become so commonplace that they defined the era. But his criticism was not aimed at mountebanks who traded in “imposture”; rather, he chastised the public for not being more skeptical and discerning. He also lamented that the formerly “honorable” medical profession had “been infested by quackery and humbug.”⁴ The overarching argument of his essay was clear: widespread trust issues plagued nineteenth-century society. Many of these anxieties about trust and sincerity stemmed from increasing feelings of alienation and anonymity triggered by major social forces like urbanization, immigration, and market revolution. As a result, residents of northeastern cities in particular developed a number of rituals and signifiers to navigate what was increasingly becoming a “world of strangers.”⁵ But as Dr. McCauley’s essay demonstrates, concerns about trust and sincerity were not an exclusively urban or Northern phenomenon, restricted to social dealings with unknown individuals. Preoccupations with the trust and loyalty of enslaved people indicate that the era’s anxieties about authenticity and truth were widespread and, especially in the South, laden with racial connotations. The environment of mutual mistrust brewed by slavery ensured that despite daily contact and the ineluctable intimacy bred by proximity, enslaved people and slaveholders were, in many ways, also operating in a “world of strangers.”

A Natural Tendency to Untruth

Concerns about the sincerity of enslaved people gave rise to debates among slaveholders about whether or not enslaved people were inherently deceitful. An 1857 article on plantation management for overseers in Southern Planter warned that “the only way to keep a negro honest is not to trust him.”⁶ In her diary, Kemble devoted a great deal of attention to whether enslaved people were capable of honesty. Given her frequent discussion of enslaved people’s trustworthiness it was a subject of much interest to Kemble, and a popular topic for members of the planter class. One local slaveholder opined that enslaved people were very similar to the Irish, citing the shared propensity to “lying and pilfering … of both peoples.” During a visit to another neighbor, Kemble recalled that they debated “the credibility” of enslaved people with some positing that “no negro was to be believed on any occasion or any subject.” Kemble’s own husband averred that “it was impossible to believe any word” enslaved people uttered.⁷

The fact that Kemble’s husband believed enslaved people to be liars had a profound impact on plantation policy, and it became a source of tension between Kemble, her husband, and the plantation’s overseer. Kemble found that the prevalent stereotype that enslaved people were deceitful promoted a climate of suspicion on plantations and put enslaved people’s lives at stake. In an article in DeBow’s Review Dr. McTyeire addressed whether to call a doctor when an enslaved person was ill, advising readers to “guard … against feigned sickness,” as though this were a common phenomenon.⁸ Because of the ubiquity of the idea that enslaved people’s physical self-assessments were not credible, Henry Bibb claimed that enslaved people were given minimal care when they were sick. Bibb attributed this to slaveholders’ conviction that any enslaved person who said they were ill was “a liar and a hypocrite” who “only wanted to keep from work.”⁹ Kemble repeatedly encountered this perception when, on behalf of some women on her husband’s plantation, she tried to reduce the workload required of enslaved women when they were pregnant or postpartum. Kemble brought the issue to the overseer who told her that enslaved women on the plantation were faking pregnancy, “constantly … shamming themselves in the family-way” to shirk their duties.¹⁰

The stereotype that enslaved people lied about their health to avoid work was so enduring that enslaved people were even thought to feign death, a practice referred to as “playing possum” or “possuming.”¹¹ Sella Martin recalled the story of an enslaved man named Flanders whose owner ordered that Flanders be hung up and given over “four hundred … lashes.” The slaveholder whipped Flanders long after he appeared to be unconscious, even after another slave pointed out that Flanders was not responding and might be dead. The owner continued the beating unabated, claiming that Flanders was merely “playing possum.” Eventually the slaveholder realized that Flanders had stopped moving, at which point he stabbed the enslaved man in the foot several times to be sure. When Flanders still did not respond, the slaveholder finally pronounced him dead.¹² This scene is a testament to the brutality of slavery and is proof of how little slaveholders trusted enslaved people. The slaveholder not only disregarded the enslaved person who pointed out that Flanders was “dying,” but also ignored all signs that he was flogging a dead man, so convinced was he that enslaved people could not be believed on any subject.

The perception that enslaved people were born liars was codified by the legal system of the antebellum South, which denied enslaved people and free Black people the right to testify in court unless it was against another person of color.¹³ For enslaved people like Moses Grandy, this meant that “the evidence of a black man, or … many black men, stands for nothing against that of one white.” Grandy bemoaned that a White person could do anything they wanted to a Black person as long as they made sure there were no White witnesses.¹⁴ Jacob Stroyer pointed out the folly of such laws when recounting the tale of an infamously cruel “slave hunter” who was suspected of killing some fugitives, but the only people who had seen proof of his brutality were enslaved people. As a result, the man was not brought to justice until a White individual who suspected him of murder befriended him and wheedled a confession out of him.¹⁵ With this example Stroyer elucidated that any number of criminals might go free because enslaved people were not considered trustworthy in a court of law.

Slaveholders also worried about whether enslaved people’s dishonesty extended to theft. While some members of the planter class argued that enslaved people were as prone to stealing as they were to lying, other slaveholders contended that enslaved people primarily stole food, a crime that could be avoided if a master provided “sufficient wholesome food.”¹⁶ One Maryland slaveholder even swore that he “would trust a nigger with [his] money a great deal sooner than [he] would with cows and hogs.”¹⁷ Indeed, for all the assertions that enslaved people were thieves, a number of slave narratives and slaveholder memoirs described incidents of enslaved people being “entrust[ed]” with money or valuable property, including a slave mistress’s diamonds.¹⁸ Although these anecdotes supported slaveholders being able to trust enslaved people with their lives, food, and valuables, other stories about how enslaved people stole food or robbed from only stingy masters functioned as cautionary tales for slaveholders. Rather than be shadowed by anxieties of enslaved thieves, slaveholders could increase food allowances or reassure themselves that they provided ample food and thus had nothing to worry about.

Kemble frequently remarked that enslaved people were “habitual liars” not because of a “natural tendency to untruth,” but because they were unable to differentiate “between truth and falsehood.” Despite believing that they had a habit of lying, Kemble was struck by how bad enslaved people were at deception. She recalled that an enslaved cook was accused of stealing meat, and Kemble was convinced of his guilt because the “lies he told … were so curiously shallow, child-like, and transparent, that … they confirmed the fact of his theft quite as much, if not more, than an absolute confession.” Her contention that she easily saw through his lies hints that Kemble thought she excelled at reading the sincerity of enslaved people, and that she assumed that enslaved people could not intentionally lie. This was underscored when she wrote that she believed enslaved people’s accounts of life under the previous overseers, claiming “let the propensity to lying of the poor wretched slaves be what it will, they could not invent, with a common consent, the things that they … all tell” her about the cruelty of the former overseers.¹⁹ Kemble concluded that their similar stories corroborated one another, but she also implied that since enslaved people could not deliberately lie on their own they certainly could not create and sustain a collective lie.

Despite the popular notion that enslaved people were incapable of telling the truth, whether by birth or through social conditioning, a number of proslavery texts contained impassioned defenses of enslaved people’s honesty and trustworthiness. Many slaveholders provided convoluted or condescending reasons why enslaved people could not or did not lie, perhaps to assuage their concerns about the veracity and sincerity of those they enslaved. Slavery advocate Thomas Roderick Dew declared that many slaveholders “would sooner rely upon their slaves’ fidelity and attachment” during a crisis “than on any other … individuals.”²⁰ William Harper weighed in on the subject in his own proslavery essay, noting that he had “never heard or observed, that slaves have any peculiar proclivity to falsehood,” or had ever known an enslaved person to lie “for a malicious purpose.” Instead he suggested that they usually lied to protect another enslaved person, which he applauded, as such deception was at least rooted in “some semblance of fidelity.” Similarly, Harper gave enslaved people the benefit of the doubt that if they lied it might be because the “truth could not be told without breach of confidence.” Harper was so intent on defending enslaved people’s trustworthiness, and the institution as a whole, that he assured his reader that enslaved people’s lies were infrequent or were due to “fidelity” and a desire to protect their owners’ discretion. He decried the perception that enslaved people were untrustworthy, observing that “even if” a slave harbored “no feelings or designs” of deceit “they will be attributed to him.” In his view enslaved people were viewed with unwarranted and excessive suspicion because of slaveholders’ paranoid imaginations. Harper conjectured that if these irrational misgivings could be checked, then “confidence and good will” would flourish between trusting slaveholder and trusted enslaved person.²¹

Harper praised the loyal nature of enslaved people at length, claiming that their “fidelity to their masters is not to be shaken,” especially when they had “confidence” in their owner.²² Harper saw trust as shared and mutually reinforcing; an enslaved person who had “confidence” in their owners could then be trusted to be unerringly faithful. (Harper did not entertain the notion that enslaved people might not trust those who owned them.) Many proslavery authors discussed enslaved people’s capacity for loyalty, effusively praising enslaved men and women who had provided a lifetime of faithful service. James Henry Hammond penned a lengthy homage to enslaved people who were loyal from “cradle” to grave, their owner’s or their own, whichever came first.²³ George Sawyer commended an enslaved man named Jack who “had lived to see three generations” of children born to his owner’s family, and how they held him in high esteem because he was “faithful” and “devoted.” Of course, Sawyer was quick to point out that this “fidelity … to their masters” was not rooted in “intellect” or a “refined sentiment of gratitude” but was an “instinctive impulse” akin to the faithfulness exhibited by dogs.²⁴ It is typical of White supremacist proslavery arguments that in lauding enslaved people for loyalty Sawyer also dismissed the trait as animal “instinct” rather than an acquired virtue or skill.

Those who clung tightly to the idea that enslaved people were sincerely loyal even found a way to explain enslaved people’s untrustworthy acts: attributing them to Northern abolitionists. Southern court cases and proslavery texts provide a window into the widespread conviction that abolitionists’ primary objective was convincing enslaved people to run away.²⁵ Harriet Jacobs recalled that when her brother William accompanied his owner to the North the slaveholder initially wrote a letter complimenting William for being “most faithful,” even though “abolitionists had tried to decoy him away.” However, news arrived shortly after announcing that the abolitionists had “succeeded.” The slaveholder expressed shock that William had escaped, declaring that he had “trusted him” as if he were his own brother, so he did not believe that the “abolitionists … could tempt him.”²⁶ Eventually the slaveholder placed the blame on abolitionists, since that was easier for him to believe than accepting that William would leave of his own volition. Other proslavery writers feared that Northern abolitionists had infiltrated the South, aided by poor, nonslaveholding White Southerners. Daniel Hundley fretted that the “Yankee” was in league with poor White Southerners to identify “discontented” enslaved people and encourage rebellion.²⁷ Edward Pollard cautioned against trusting Northern transplants in the slave South who pretended to be “the greatest admirers of the peculiar institution, and, to honey-fuggle” Southerners, even vociferously critique the North, all while covertly “tampering with the slaves” and insulting the South at every “secret opportunit[y].”²⁸ Hundley and Pollard were drawing distinct battle lines of who could and could not be trusted. Not only did they consider all Northerners to be covert abolitionists, but they implied that anyone who did not own slaves should be viewed with suspicion.

These elaborate conspiracies that framed enslaved people as victims of abolitionist chicanery rather than willing agents in their own liberation reveal slaveholders’ intense desire to trust the people they enslaved. Such slaveholders swore that enslaved people never told “malicious” lies, that they stole only food, and that any enslaved people that rebelled had been duped by abolitionists. Slaveholders were so invested in the idea that enslaved people were loyal because at stake were slaveholders’ very lives and their way of life. Members of the planter class could not admit the extent of their skepticism about the people who fed, nursed, and dressed them. Instead advocates of slavery had to blame any breakdowns in trust on enslaved people’s innate shortcomings or on external factors like abolitionists. It was too dangerous to concede that slavery as a system was the problem.

Distrusting Masters

While proslavery advocates and slaveholders pondered whether enslaved people were inherently deceitful or incapable of lying, consensus among formerly enslaved people was that slaveholders, and most White people in general, were liars and hypocrites. Jacobs observed that “slaveholders pride themselves upon being honorable … but if you were to hear the enormous lies they tell their slaves, you would have small respect for their veracity.”²⁹ This critique called into question the planter class’s vaunted sense of “honor,” while also implicitly repudiating notions that enslaved people were the deceitful ones. This learned mistrust of White people was so pervasive that even ostensibly sympathetic White people were viewed with suspicion. While hired out to a shipyard Douglass encountered two Irishmen who advised him to run away. Douglass was skeptical, aware that “white men have been known to encourage slaves to escape” in order to catch them for a bounty, and Douglass feared that the Irish workers, though “seemingly good men,” planned to do the same.³⁰ Whether or not the men intended to trick Douglass, other White people had clearly realized they could profit from convincing enslaved people to run away. However, based on such tales, enslaved people like Douglass learned to be cautious around White people who spoke of freedom.³¹ Such mistrust, indoctrinated over generations and reinforced daily through interactions with members of the slavocracy, was hard for formerly enslaved people to shake. Jacobs remembered that a White ship captain who helped her escape from slavery was upset that she “had so little confidence in him” after all he had done for her. “Ah, if he had ever been a slave he would have known how difficult it was to trust a white man,” Jacobs sighed.³²

Sources show that trust between slaveholders and enslaved people was so hard to cultivate because of how frequently planters made promises to enslaved people that were never realized. No promise was more often made and then broken than the guarantee that enslaved families would be kept together, that an enslaved person and their children or spouses would not be sold. Henry Box Brown’s owner “promised faithfully” not to sell Brown’s wife, and he “pretended to entertain an extreme horror of separating families.” Because of his “apparent sincerity” Brown and his family believed him, but after barely a year of marriage “his conscientious scruples vanished” and he sold Brown’s wife.³³ Similarly, when Grandy was a child, his intemperate owner sold off many enslaved people to cover his debts, but he swore he would never sell Grandy’s mother and her eight surviving children. He did not keep the vow long; Moses was not sold, but most of his siblings were.

One of the bitterest betrayals for enslaved people was when the promise of freedom was denied. Some slaveholders gave assurances that an enslaved person would be manumitted or permitted to buy their own freedom, often with little intention of following through. Grandy discovered this after he bought his freedom for $600 from his owner, Mr. Grice, only to be sold by Grice to a Mr. Trewitt. Grandy would pay for his liberty twice more before he was finally freed, ultimately spending a total of $1,850 to purchase himself.³⁴ Brown shared that situations like this were not uncommon, that he had “known many slaves” who worked and saved diligently in an effort to purchase their freedom, only to find that “after they paid for themselves over and over again” they were still denied their liberty by “unprincipled” owners.³⁵ Time and time again slaveholders proved that for all their talk of loyalty and mutual affection profit took precedent over sustaining trust with enslaved people.

Because of this familiar pattern of broken pacts, enslaved people knew there were a number of reasons why a slaveholder’s guarantees might not pan out. Jacobs explained that “the promises made to slaves, though with kind intentions, and sincere at the time, depend upon many contingencies for their fulfillment.” Interestingly, she was not saying that all slaveholders’ “promises” were tantamount to lies; instead, their pledges could be entirely “sincere” yet still never be realized. Jacobs’s brother William hinted at how little he trusted his owner’s word when he ran away, despite the slaveholder repeatedly swearing that he would free William in five years. Even if the slaveholder was not making false promises to secure William’s labor and loyalty, a variety of other factors could intervene and determine his fate. William knew that the slaveholder might decide to “postpone the promise,” he might fall into debt, so “his property might be seized by creditors; or he might die, without making arrangements” for William to be freed. William ruefully noted that he “had too often known such accidents to happen to slaves who had kind masters.”³⁶ The Jacobs siblings knew that even “sincere” or “kind” slaveholders answered to higher economic and legal powers. The lesson here was that slaveholders’ promises and professions of affective ties were of little worth in a society in which people were commodified, and market forces dominated.

A passage from Sella Martin’s narrative of his time in bondage sheds light on how slaveholders’ promises were extracted and on how the process of trust could break down. After being abruptly separated from his family years before, Martin learned that his mother was alive, though not well, and living only sixty miles away. When Martin begged permission to visit her, his master “seemed glad” that Martin had learned his mother’s whereabouts and “promised in the genuineness of his joy to take [Martin] himself … shortly.” However, as time passed, the slaveholder grew “cool on the subject,” realizing “how sentimental, and therefore how silly, to slaveholders, it would appear” to travel that distance simply to reunite an enslaved family. He tried to discourage Martin from making the trip, finally telling Martin that he could not take him and “would not trust [him] to go alone.” Despite the man’s change of heart Martin was adamant that his owner had planned on taking him to see his mother initially. In his view the slaveholder decided against it when it occurred to him that the act would be perceived as an inappropriate emotional response to an enslaved person, even one viewed as loyal, because it would be seen by other slaveholders as “sentimental” or “silly.” The fact that the slaveowner succumbed to imagined peer pressure is evidence of the power of the affective norms of slavery and of how those norms were internally policed. Nonetheless Martin framed the event charitably, alleging that the slaveholder did not renege on the deal from “want of feeling,” as the planter had vowed to consider purchasing Martin’s mother even though he was not in the market for another slave.³⁷ Maybe Martin was giving the slaveholder the benefit of the doubt, or he tried to appear forgiving in his narrative. Or perhaps Martin sincerely believed that the slaveholder had entertained the idea of buying Martin’s mother. It is possible that he had contemplated reuniting the two in some way, but it is also incredibly likely that the slaveholder’s “maybe” was always intended as a “no.”

During her time in bondage Jacobs learned that some of the least credible promises were those made by slaveholders who hoped to trade a pledge of benefits for sex. Jacobs saw this when Dr. Flint sold an enslaved woman who was believed to be the mother of one of his children. As the woman was taken away she cried out to Flint, “You promised to treat me well.” Dr. Flint’s actions confirmed for Jacobs that he was not to be trusted. More importantly, the sale of the enslaved woman demonstrated that even if an enslaved person had sexual relations with a slaveholder it was no insurance that they would receive any of the favors or security they had implicitly or explicitly bargained for. Later Jacobs made the calculated decision to engage in a sexual relationship with a Mr. Sands, who was not her owner, rather than succumb to the harassment of Dr. Flint, partially due to her hope that intimacy with Sands could protect her from Flint. However, she was once again reminded that the exchange of sex was no guarantee that freedom would be given or that assurances could be kept. Jacobs and Sands had two children, Benjamin and Ellen, whom Sands purchased and vowed to free. But after becoming a congressman and having children with his White wife, Sands made Ellen a maid for her White half-sister, and Jacobs feared their pact would be forgotten.³⁸ Her narrative illuminates that even enslaved people who knew that slaveholders would likely break their promises either had few other options or still held out hope that sexual relations could be traded for long-term or short-term gains. Her memory of how Sands had once offered so many assurances, and the anger the enslaved woman felt at Flint breaking his promise to “treat” her “well,” suggest that slaveholders knowingly exploited the belief that a transaction of favors had been negotiated in order to coerce sexual relations.

Authors of slave narratives often shared stories of enslaved people being betrayed by White people. Stories about once-trusted White people who had stolen free papers or betrayed information about fugitives were passed down from one generation to the next, preserving family history and teaching young enslaved people how to navigate the emotional politics of slavery and avoid being fooled.³⁹ Other anecdotes circulated within enslaved communities in order to warn against specific slaveholders. Douglass had heard many times of an infamous interaction between his owner, Colonel Lloyd, and an enslaved man. According to Douglass, Lloyd owned so many human beings that he did not recognize them all, and the people enslaved on his satellite farms did not know Lloyd by sight. As a result, Lloyd encountered a Black man on the road one day and asked who his master was, and the man replied, “Colonel Lloyd.” Lloyd did not reveal his identity, but asked “does the colonel treat you well?,” to which the enslaved man answered, “No, sir.” Lloyd pressed him further and the enslaved man candidly responded that he was worked “too hard” but was fed “enough, such as it is.” Lloyd never admitted that he was in fact the man’s owner, and the enslaved man continued on, unaware of whom he had spoken to. Several weeks passed until Lloyd’s overseer told the enslaved man that for critiquing his owner he was to be sold.⁴⁰

The moral of the story, as Douglass warily observed, was that there was a “penalty” for “telling the truth,” but the woeful tale provided two related lessons to enslaved people: treat all White people as though they were one’s own (untrustworthy) owner, and lie when asked about life in bondage. Douglass mentioned that as a result of incidents such as this, when asked about their treatment, enslaved people “almost universally say they are contented, and that their masters are kind.” Enslaved people had been led to believe that slaveholders would circulate “spies … to ascertain their views and feelings” about their owners. Whether this was true of many slaveholders or not, the rumor was powerful enough to encourage enslaved people to self-censor, and, more grievously, it fomented distrust instead of solidarity among enslaved people. Douglass vouched that these lessons were effectively ingrained in him, as while enslaved he had often been “asked … if [Douglass] had a kind master,” and he never responded with “a negative answer.”⁴¹ This passage exemplifies that some of the scripts enslaved people used to enact loyalty were learned from other enslaved people, sometimes through their trial and error. Each time an enslaved person passed down a story of a breach of confidence, it served as a cautionary tale about trusting that individual master, while also helping to perpetuate the belief that slaveholders and White people categorically could not be trusted.

Aware that enslaved people did not trust them, and the obstacles this might present, some members of the planter class made concerted efforts to at least seem trustworthy. Brown detailed how a man who was trying to buy Brown’s wife came to him because the slaveholder did not have enough money, and he hoped Brown would lend him fifty dollars. In return, the slaveholder swore that Brown and his wife would not be separated. Brown was “a little suspicious about being fooled out of [his] money,” so he asked the man “what security” he had that his wife would not be sold anyway. The man responded defensively, asking Brown, “Do you think … that I could have the heart to sell your wife to any person other than yourself, and particularly knowing that your wife is my sister and you are my brother in the Lord?” Brown was skeptical of the man’s religious professions, but he ultimately decided to lend him the money, not because the man “feigned piety” or because he had any “faith” in the man’s assurances, but because he believed that the man would feel an “obligation” to him based on the loan.⁴²

This exchange is particularly interesting because while trust was established long enough for the money to be lent, neither man trusted the other for the expected reason. The would-be buyer clearly believed that a show of religion, couched in the language of family, could function as emotional collateral and make Brown trust him. Brown did not place any credence in that, but he believed that lending the man money would encourage him to keep his word. Sadly, the man should not have been trusted; he sold Brown’s wife for a profit, which was likely his plan all along.⁴³ This betrayal highlights that some members of the planter class tried to make themselves appear trustworthy in the hopes of obtaining a short-term goal (a fifty-dollar loan) or a long-term gain (the profit he made from the sale.) When slaveholders recognized that they could not create trust even temporarily, they might enlist the help of enslaved people to serve as a more trusting proxy. After Jacobs ran away her owner sought the assistance of her family in locating her. He asked her Uncle Phillip to go to New York to look for her, arguing, “You are her relative, and she would trust you,” while “She might object to coming with me.”⁴⁴ Her owner, like Brown’s, saw the difficulties of establishing trust, and the benefits of doing so, even if betraying that trust was their ultimate objective.

Some slaveholders deliberately fostered an environment of apprehension and suspicion, often in the hopes of increasing productivity. One tactic described by Bibb was for overseers to motivate enslaved people to pick cotton by trying to “deceive them” into working harder for a prize or other “inducement.” With the lure of a reward enslaved people would pick tirelessly, but once the overseer saw how much each enslaved person was capable of picking they were whipped if they picked less in the future.⁴⁵ Douglass recalled that the enslaved people hired out by a local man named Covey labored diligently “in his absence almost as well as his presence” because the slaveholder kept them on guard by frequently “surprising” them. One of his methods was to sneak up on them and startle them while they were working in the field. Because of this the enslaved laborers knew that “it was never safe to stop” working, even for a moment, because Covey’s every waking hour was “devoted to planning and perpetrating the grossest deceptions.”⁴⁶ It is possible that Covey wanted to keep the enslaved people in a state of anxiety, rather than trying to secure their trust, because unlike a slaveowner who could create an environment of mutual trust through promises, Covey had only hired them. Since Covey leased the enslaved people for a year, he could not guarantee them care in their old age or manumission in return for their loyalty. The only affective promises he could afford was that they would live in fear until the lease was done.

Establishing Trust

In the slave South trust did not just facilitate negotiations of power: trust was power, with very real economic, political, and social value.⁴⁷ Slaveholders and enslaved people had to weigh the costs of trusting and distrusting in order to navigate their daily interactions, so they employed a variety of strategies to establish trust and ward off dishonesty. According to Douglass, slaveholders often resorted to force to compel enslaved people to be sincere, observing that “suspicion and torture are the approved methods of getting at truth here.”⁴⁸ Other members of the planter class decided that the best method of obtaining sincerity was to reward enslaved people who were faithful or honest with compliments, minor benefits, or even the promise of freedom.

Some slaveholders concurred with Harper’s claim that enslaved people were “excitable by praise” and thus could be encouraged to be loyal or truthful by complimenting such behavior. Perhaps this is what William Jacobs’s owner intended when he penned a letter to the Jacobs family, marveling that William “had proved a most faithful servant, and … that no mother had ever trained a better boy.”⁴⁹ This insinuated that enslaved parents were responsible for inculcating their children with a sense of loyalty, but “faithful” service was still notable enough to be lauded. The Crafts’ narrative shows that this commendation could come from strangers. Having observed William Craft interact with his supposed owner (Craft’s wife, Ellen, in disguise), a gentleman on a train in Virginia exclaimed, “I reckon your master’s father hasn’t any more such faithful and smart boys as you,” to which William replied, “‘O, yes, sir, he has … lots …’ Which was literally true.”⁵⁰ William simultaneously deflected the comment and exhibited his dry humor. He was not being modest; he was making light of the fact that of course “lots” of the people his owner enslaved were more “faithful,” as he was in the process of running away. Though the joke was at the expense of the man who had misread the nature of the loyalty William held for “his master,” the observer was correct in perceiving that William was loyal to Ellen, who was pretending to be his owner. Regardless of the stranger’s ability to accurately read people, his words indicate that it was acceptable to praise other slaveholders’ enslaved people for their fidelity.

One strategy many slaveholders believed would secure long-term trust was to give their word that enslaved people would eventually be freed or taken care of in their old age. Through both implicit and explicit promises of liberty or comfortable retirement, slaveholders hoped to establish that past and present loyalty would be rewarded in the future. Slaveholder D. B. DeBow counseled that enslaved people cherished the idea of care for the elderly, so a vow to do so was a gift in and of itself, noting, “For such a green and cheerful old age, should every faithful servant be permitted to hope.”⁵¹ Thus the stories planters like Hammond and Sawyer told about loyal, lifelong enslaved companions did more than romanticize the relations of slavery; they helped perpetuate the idea of what enslaved people could “hope” to expect in their “old age” in return for prolonged “faithful” service. Whether or not enslaved people saw being cared for in their “cheerful old age” as an adequate exchange for a lifetime of unpaid labor, many slaveholders believed this was a useful bounty to motivate enslaved people. This speaks volumes about how slaveholders wanted enslaved people to perceive them and about what they thought enslaved people wanted in return for their work and trust. It is impossible to determine how many slaveholders intended to fulfill vows to manumit enslaved people, and how many only gave assurances of freedom and retirement to instill short-term loyalty, with no plan that they would ever come to fruition. Court records disclose that slaveholders did, on occasion, manumit enslaved people, ostensibly as a reward for their loyal service, but the infrequency of such cases proves that it did not happen as often as enslaved people hoped.⁵² Nevertheless, the fact that these vows were sometimes realized shows that either some slaveholders perceived exemplary fidelity to be worthy of reward, or they saw value in keeping their promises.

One case in particular illustrates that at best the exchange of loyalty for freedom was still a lengthy and unfulfilling process. Scranton v. Rose Demere and John Demere, brought before a Georgia court in 1849, concerned the wishes of the late Raymond Demere that an enslaved couple, Joy and Rose, and their children, John and Jim, be manumitted for their “fidelity” and “faithful conduct.” In Demere’s will he shared how Joy and Rose “not only saved and protected” his plantation during the British invasion of St. Simons Island, “but actually buried … a large sum of money,” which he recognized that they could easily have stolen and used to “obtain … their freedom.” For the slaveholder this was the truest test of loyalty, made all the more meaningful because most of the enslaved people on the island took advantage of British occupation to run away. His description of what the couple could have done with the money hints that other enslaved people did just that, or that in moments of reverie in the intervening years Raymond Demere had stopped and imagined what his life might be like if Rose and Joy had chosen differently. Court records do not explain why the couple stayed and protected their owner’s home and valuables, but they capture the protracted legal battle as the executors of Demere’s estate refused to honor his wishes. Eventually the court decided in his favor, and Rose and her surviving son, John, received their freedom, as well as over four thousand dollars.⁵³ Decades after the British invasion, loyalty paid dividends for Rose and John, but for Joy and Jim, who had passed away, it was too late. Even when enslaved people did reap some benefit for loyal behavior it was never on their terms.⁵⁴

Enslaved people may rarely have been freed by their owners, but many still dreamed of being manumitted when a slaveholder died. The strength of this conviction is evident in the ways that enslaved people reacted when they were not freed after their owner’s death. When Brown’s owner was on his deathbed, he called for Brown and his mother. Brown wrote that they rushed hopefully to his side, as they “both expected that [they] should be set free when master died.” Brown invites the reader to “imagine [their] deep disappointment” when the dying man instead gave them only advice, telling Brown to “be an honest boy and never tell an untruth.” He also informed them that his son William would be their new owner. Brown felt that his owner “deceived [them] by his former kind treatment and raised expectations” that they would be free. Brown did not say if the man had ever explicitly promised they would be manumitted when he died, but they had received enough assurances that they were astonished by his last words, “left to mourn, not so much [their] master’s death” as the fact that their most likely path to freedom had been foreclosed.

While many slaveholders believed that enslaved people longed for nothing more than to be cared for in their old age, what enslaved people truly desired in exchange for loyalty was freedom. Brown affirmed that little could “buoy up the spirit” of an enslaved person like “the hope of future freedom.” Furthermore, Brown contended that slaveholders were well aware of this desire and used it to their advantage, sustaining the fantasy that enslaved people might receive or be able to buy their liberty in order to extract more labor from them “without … entertaining the slightest idea of ever fulfilling their promise.”⁵⁵ Clearly this was a topic that enslaved people had discussed; they had perhaps warned each other about dreams of freedom being raised and dashed at their owners’ deathbeds, and they commiserated over vows that were never realized.

Though they were often empty, slaveholders’ promises of freedom produced hope, which could have an immense impact on an enslaved person’s outlook. After Douglass tried and failed to run away, his owner, Thomas Auld, guaranteed the defiant would-be fugitive that if he “behaved … properly” Auld would free him when he turned twenty-five. Douglass expressed gratitude “for this one beam of hope,” though he feared it was “too good to be true.”⁵⁶ Douglass admitted that even if Auld’s assurances were unlikely to come to fruition they still provided him with a sliver of optimism to cling to. Perhaps that is exactly why slaveholders like Auld made lavish declarations that they may or may not keep: even the slimmest “beam of hope” could compel an enslaved person who was prone to rebellion or running away to “behave” if it might lead to freedom one day.

Enslaved people understood that some owners were willing to exchange large and small favors in return for trustworthiness. From a young age Jacobs sensed that there was a value to fidelity, and that loyal behavior could be traded for a variety of advantages. As a child Jacobs was frequently permitted to “share some indulgences” with her owner’s children. At the time Jacobs thought being included was “no more than right,” but she was still “grateful” enough for this treatment that she endeavored “to merit the kindness by the faithful discharge of [her] duties.”⁵⁷ This implies that while enslaved children like Jacobs might believe that the modicum of “indulgences” they were given was a “right” rather than a privilege, she was also aware that such acts of “kindness” would disappear if she did not respond with “faithful” service. Even enslaved children grasped that enacting loyalty was a strategic choice that could be mutually beneficial.

Aware of the importance placed on fidelity by members of the planter class, enslaved people sometimes expressly communicated that their loyalty and honesty had a price. These bargains could be transacted in letters, in private, or on the auction block. In 1834 James Hope wrote to his owner to voice his “desir[e]” to return to the plantation where he had been born. Hope swore that if the slaveowner allowed him to do so, then he would give his “reverence” and “ever … obey his master.” Hope reiterated his promise of fidelity by signing the letter “from you obt [obedient] servant.”⁵⁸ His owner may already have assumed that, as an enslaved man, Hope should be “obedient,” so Hope’s offer of future “reverence” emphasized that he believed that deference was not a given: it had to be earned. The letter also contained the tacit threat that if Hope was not permitted to return to his family that he would not be “ever” obedient.

Enslaved people understood that loyalty could be bartered. Therefore, many also believed that obedience and trustworthiness could not be expected if negotiations fell through. Josiah Henson prided himself on his honesty, so he was committed to buying his freedom rather than running away. However, after his owner betrayed him by inflating Henson’s price, Henson began to plot his escape, declaring that if his owner had “been honest enough to adhere to his own bargain,” Henson also would have stayed loyal. By breaking his promise to Henson, the slaveholder ensured that he would receive neither loyalty nor honesty. In Henson’s view, a trade had been brokered, and if his owner would not abide by the terms, then neither would he. Of course, sometimes slaveholders realized that they needed to fulfill certain promises in return for continued loyalty or sincerity from enslaved people. When Henson’s owner was reluctant to sell him, Henson sought the aid of the man’s brother-in-law, who warned the slaveholder “that if he did not take care, and accept a fair offer” from the enslaved man then Henson might run away. This convinced the slaveholder, and Henson negotiated the price of his freedom for $450.⁵⁹ Although Henson’s owner was motivated more by fear of property loss than by gratitude, this incident underscores that some planters understood that if they did not reward fidelity they would reap deceit.

The Price of Loyalty

Henson’s struggle to purchase his freedom demonstrates the price of loyalty for slaveholders and also the cost of that fidelity for enslaved people. Though Henson’s owner eventually let Henson purchase himself for $450, the terms of the agreement changed after the slaveholder fell deathly ill. Henson nursed the slaveowner back to health, which only accentuated his loyalty and value. Based on that quality of care Henson’s owner reneged on their initial deal, abruptly raising Henson’s price to $1,000. Instead of rewarding Henson for his reliability, the slaveholder proved his own inconstancy and illuminated the cost-benefit analysis of faithfulness. Henson felt cheated so he disparaged the slaveholder for his lack of “obligation” to himself, frustrated that saving the man’s life did not make him feel indebted to Henson; rather, Henson’s fidelity served “only to enhance [his] money value.”⁶⁰ This experience taught Henson that loyalty was a form of currency in the slave South, but enslaved people rarely profited from it.

Some enslaved people were able to use their record of loyalty to their advantage when negotiating their own price. When Elizabeth Keckley tried to buy freedom for herself and her son, her owner initially would not agree to the arrangement. Instead he gave her a few dollars and said that if she wanted to go she could use it to take a ferry across the river to freedom. Since he disdainfully refused her offer to purchase her liberty, Keckley was understandably wary of her owner’s motives in giving her fare money and telling her to run away. A cagey Keckley responded by stressing her loyalty, endearing herself to him by proclaiming that she did not want to run away, though she had ample opportunity to do so. She reminded him that though it would be easy to take the local ferry to free territory that she would never do so because it was illegal. According to Keckley her master had hoped for such a response, so she knew she had “pleased” him with both her profession of loyalty and her commitment to the law. Keckley believed that this test of her fidelity succeeded, as not long after her owner announced that he had changed his mind because she “had served his family faithfully,” and he offered freedom for Keckley and her son for $1,200.⁶¹ Keckley knew how to fully embody the role of the “faithful” enslaved person, and that such a performance would “please” her owner. In mentioning the proximity of the ferry Keckley was highlighting how easily she could have run away, and that she could still escape in the future.

Bibb witnessed how the commodification of fidelity operated in the marketplace when his owner fell into debt and was forced to sell many of the people he enslaved. As the planter tried to auction off an elderly enslaved man named Richard, a buyer inquired if the aged man was still able to work. The slaveholder responded that though the man could do little “manual labor” due to his age that he would prefer Richard over younger enslaved people “who are able to perform twice as much labor—because [the slaveholder knew] him to be faithful and trustworthy, a Christian.” It is impossible to say if the slaveholder meant that “trustworthy” and “faithful” Richard was worth more than a younger, stronger man. However, the fact that he made this declaration at an auction, when he needed desperately to cover his debts, suggests he believed that the assembled prospective buyers recognized a market value for these qualities. The sales pitch succeeded, as Bibb observed that someone was willing to spend almost “two hundred dollars” on Richard because of his reputed “good Christian character.”⁶²

Bibb also saw how dishonesty could depreciate an enslaved person’s value when another owner tried to sell the defiant Bibb for running away so often.⁶³ Whenever potential buyers asked Bibb if he had escaped in the past, his owner would invariably “answer this question for [him] in the negative,” denying that Bibb had ever run away and expounding upon his “Christian character” in order to make Bibb seem “pious and honest.” Bibb noted that he had “never had religion enough to keep … from running away,” thus pointing out the double deception taking place on the auction block, as his master lied about Bibb’s nonexistent faith and his constancy.⁶⁴

But the monetary value attached to Christianity was not the sole reason to encourage religiosity among enslaved people; many slaveholders believed religious training made enslaved people more docile and loyal. Henry Box Brown explained that from a young age, enslaved children were indoctrinated with the Christian precepts of honesty and obedience.⁶⁵ Of course, if members of the planter class hoped that enslaved Christians were more truthful and trustworthy, that religious inculcation also made the hypocrisy of supposedly faithful slaveholders all the more blatant. Bibb saw this when a man who interrogated him about his trustworthiness before buying him was “one of the basest hypocrites that [he] ever saw,” who spoke “like the best of slave holding Christians, and acted at home like the devil.”⁶⁶ Brown explained that enslaved people could not “believe or trust in such a religion” as that of slaveholders because its sole aim was deluding enslaved people into adhering to the biblical dictum: “servants be obedient to your masters.” Brown believed that White people could “lie, and rob the slaves, and do anything else” as long as they “read the bible and joined the church.”⁶⁷ As a result of enslaved people’s suspicions about the sincerity of slaveowners’ faith, Douglass opined that slaveholders could give some credence to the religiosity of enslaved people, but enslaved people could not have the same “confidence in the piety of their masters.”⁶⁸ Unbeknownst to slaveholders their tactic for making enslaved people trustworthy and trusting had the unintended effect of convincing enslaved people that their owners were liars and hypocrites who could not be trusted.

Cognizant of the rewards for honesty, and the punishments for disloyalty, enslaved people were often faced with difficult decisions about how and when to lie. Some formerly enslaved people went into great detail about their calculations; Henson in particular dramatized his conflicted feelings about deceit. Throughout his narrative Henson frequently defended his honesty, cataloging treacherous deeds he could have committed but did not, including killing slave traders and inciting a group of enslaved people to run away.⁶⁹ When Henson’s owner asked him to lead a slave coffle to his brother’s Kentucky plantation, it dawned on Henson how close they were to Ohio and freedom. Henson remarked that though he greatly desired liberty he had never considered running away because of his “sentiment of honor” which he “would not have violated even for freedom.” While he admitted that he had often stolen food from his owner in order to dole out extra rations to other enslaved people, Henson clarified that his sense of “honor” would not permit him to steal for himself. Still, Henson was faced with an unexpected chance for him and his fellow enslaved travelers to escape their owner “whom … none of [them] [had] any reason to love, who has been guilty of cruelty … and who had never shown the smallest sympathy” for them. Even Henson’s internal debate over whether to run or not was framed in emotional terms. Henson defended running away because he and his fellow enslaved people did not “love” their owner, and he charged the slaveholder with lacking even “the smallest sympathy with” those he enslaved. Henson’s insights show how heavily emotions and affective relations weighed into the valuation of being trusted.

Though Henson stated that running away from his dissolute owner would have been entirely justified, he still did not take advantage of their proximity to a free state, nor did he even tell the others how close freedom was, because he “had promised” his owner that he would deliver them to his brother. Henson recognized that he passed up the chance to escape “the sentiment of high honor” he knew and did “prize,” but that he would not trade his honor even for freedom.⁷⁰ Henson had any number of reasons for outlining the opportunities he had to be deceitful and why he did not take them. As an author and the protagonist of his own memoir Henson had incentives to portray himself as principled and credible. Henson may also have been trying to create a more exciting tale for his reader, embellishing what was otherwise a straightforward vignette with a hypothetical escape, or building suspense for when he did become free. Or perhaps Henson was depicting the thought process for enslaved people when the possibility arose to deceive or cheat a slaveholder. In any case, this illustrates how much slaveholders could benefit from rewarding enslaved loyalty and honesty. Even when he was out of reach of his owner Henson protected the slaveholders’ property, valuing his supposed “honor” over freedom.

Deciding to lie required savvy on the part of enslaved people, especially since they were already perceived as dishonest.⁷¹ Knowing all too well that enslaved people were encouraged to lie to facilitate sales, one potential buyer tried to compel honesty from Bibb. The buyer swore that if Bibb told “the truth like a good boy, perhaps I may buy you with your family.” He also asked Bibb if he knew how to read and write, and if he had ever run away before, repeating to him “don’t tell me no stories now.” Bibb concluded that since he had no obligation to give this man “the whole truth,” he gave only part of it, answering that he had only “run away once.” This appeased the man enough to purchase Bibb and his family.⁷²

Bibb’s decision to admit that he had “run away once” confirms that some enslaved people believed that if slaveholders expected them to lie then admitting a minor transgression would be seen as the most plausible response. Sella Martin did just that when his owner confronted him about rumors that Martin could read, and had been reading to other slaves, as Martin felt that it was “safest” to confess that he was literate. His owner issued him “a threatening warning” not to tell “a falsehood” and perhaps because of this “threat,” or because Martin feared that his reading sessions had been betrayed by another enslaved person, Martin swiftly elected to bend the truth. He knew that in a society laced with informants and bounded by mistrust he could not deny the charges outright. Instead he swore that he had read only the Bible, hoping that the slaveholder would view this pastime as harmless or even virtuous. Ultimately his lie may have helped; the slaveholder made him promise that he would stop reading, but Martin was not punished.⁷³

Depending on the seriousness of a master’s accusations, admitting a partial truth was not always an option, forcing enslaved people to weigh the risks of lying. When Solomon Northup’s owner demanded to know if he had asked a local White man to mail a letter for him, Northup mounted a three-part defense of his innocence. First Northup vehemently denied the charge, swearing that “there is no truth” to the accusation. Then he discredited Armsby, the local man who had betrayed him to his owner, saying that “Armsby is a lying, drunken fellow … and nobody believes him anyway.” Finally Northup cited his own history of honesty, reminding his owner “you know I always tell the truth.” Northup had, in fact, asked the man to write the letter. Armsby was a poor White man who lived nearby with an enslaved woman and their mixed-race children, all of which marked him as a transgressive figure on the fringes of Southern society. It was because of that liminal status that Northup had believed that he could trust Armsby with the letter, but once Northup was caught he knew that Armsby’s marginal status also meant members of planter class thought he was disreputable. Because Armsby’s character could be cast in suspect light, while Northup could boast of his own consistently trustworthy track record, Northup succeeded in convincing his master that he had been falsely accused, with Epps declaring “I’m d________d … if I don’t believe you tell the truth.”⁷⁴ Northup could take a gamble and lie because he had shored up trust and goodwill over time and because he knew who in the community was perceived as even less trustworthy.

Trust in Enslaved Communities

Trust issues plagued master-slave relationships, but they were also a problem among enslaved people. Some of the distrust stemmed from social divisions among the enslaved. As Bibb detailed to his readers, “domestic slaves are often found to be traitors to their own people, for the purpose of gaining favor with their masters.”⁷⁵ Whether or not “domestic slaves” were more likely to inform on other enslaved people, and did so to win their owners’ approval, this was evidently a common conception among enslaved people. The material deprivation of slavery also led enslaved people to worry about theft within their community.⁷⁶ The subject of enslaved people’s treachery toward one another was clearly of great interest to readers of slave narratives; Stroyer mentioned that he was often asked if enslaved people would “betray their fellow negroes … to the white man?,” hinting that the stereotype that enslaved people could not be trusted by slaveholders or by their fellow slaves was widespread and a matter of a great deal of curiosity.⁷⁷ Slave narratives provide many accounts of incidents in which an enslaved person betrayed another, but the authors also showed how enslaved people responded by establishing elaborate methods of identifying and punishing theft and deceit, and forging trust.

The process of fostering trust and honesty within the enslaved community began at a very young age. Enslaved children received a variety of lessons about who to trust, and how trust worked inside and outside the family, but they were also inculcated with the importance of distrust.⁷⁸ Many authors of slave narratives reported that as children they were told “not to steal” or develop “habits of untruth.” Some owners and overseers taught enslaved children that if they lied, stole, or “disobey[ed] their master … they would be sure to go to hell.”⁷⁹ Stroyer recalled how enslaved parents were instrumental in educating children about deception and honesty. According to Stroyer enslaved children were trained to believe that before a person died “he had to tell the truth and had to own everything he had ever done.”⁸⁰ Enslaved children would have been well aware that death was a frequent and often sudden visitor, which made the warning against deceit all the more urgent and persuasive.

As enslaved children aged though, they began to be taught that there were subtle gradations to truth and trust. Enslaved parents instructed children not to lie to them, and not to steal from fellow enslaved people, but that there was a different standard of honesty when dealing with slaveholders. Part of children’s inculcation in the nuances of truth came from trickster tales, which valorized the importance of guile when fighting an opponent with significantly more power. Beyond providing specific examples of cunning, and how the weak could triumph over the mighty with strategic deceit, many animal trickster stories centered on acquiring food.⁸¹ These tales encouraged children to use cleverness themselves in order to obtain food, even if that meant stealing for themselves or their family from plantation kitchens in order to survive.⁸²

First, however, enslaved parents had to ascertain if their children could be trusted with sensitive information.⁸³ Afraid that a child might accidentally divulge the truth about stolen food or goods, or about plans to run away or resist, enslaved parents raised children to understand that some of the things they saw in their insular community were to remain “in their sleeves” and were not to be mentioned in front of members of the slavocracy.⁸⁴ But it was one thing to teach secrecy to children; it was another to put those lessons to the test. When Jacobs’s daughter was about to be sent North, Jacobs decided to leave her hiding place to say goodbye to her. Jacobs’s grandmother worried about Jacobs revealing herself, but Jacobs assured her that she trusted her daughter and was “sure she would not betray” Jacobs. Because of this confidence in her daughter Jacobs’s grandmother relented, and mother and daughter were able to spend several hours together. Before leaving Harriet made her daughter swear that her “secret would be safe,” and the girl promised that she would “never” expose her mother’s location.⁸⁵

Jacobs’s narrative attested to how quickly enslaved children absorbed the importance of keeping secrets. After Harriet’s son Benjamin, or Benny, unwittingly saw another runaway slave, he told his great-grandmother, who ordered the boy “never to speak of it, explaining to him the frightful consequences.” Benny demonstrated how well he had learned discretion after he realized that his fugitive mother was concealed in the attic of his great-grandmother’s house. When Harriet was about to go North and spoke with her son for the first time in seven years, she realized how long he had known she was there and how hard he had worked to keep her secret. Benny shared that he had “heard somebody cough” in the attic, leading him to speculate that his mother was hiding there. After that he encouraged his friends not to play next to the house, for fear that they would also hear suspicious noises emanating from her hiding place. Once he became aware of the dangerous position they were all in, Benjamin kept watch for Dr. Flint, growing nervous if he saw the slaveholder. Jacobs remembered that he had often appeared “uneas[y] … when people were on that side of the house,” and now she knew his cautiousness stemmed from his desire to protect her. Lest her reader think that her children were unique, Jacobs averred that his cagey behavior was common; since enslaved people faced so much betrayal, they had to “early learn to be suspicious and watchful … prematurely cautious and cunning.”⁸⁶

Jacobs’s narrative exhibited how learning “to be suspicious” could be a vital skill for enslaved children like her daughter Ellen. When Ellen moved North to live with her White father’s family, the Hobbses, her freedom was far from secured. She was occasionally able to see her mother, who had since escaped North, but the rest of her time was spent working as a maid for the Hobbs family. When Ellen became convinced that a member of the family was in contact with Dr. Flint about the whereabouts of her mother, Ellen began to closely monitor the man. While she and the Hobbs children were outside one day, she watched as the man ripped up a letter and threw the pieces on the ground. Because Ellen was “full of suspicions of him” she collected the fragments. Piecing it together the letter did indeed inform Flint that Jacobs was in the area and advised him how to capture her. Ellen was able to use her distrustful intuition to protect her mother, passing the letter’s contents along to her.⁸⁷

Enslaved people had to learn how to keep family secrets and to be wary of members of the slavocracy, but they also needed to learn to navigate trust relations with other enslaved people. In his narrative Stroyer spent a great deal of time discussing how enslaved communities built trust and disciplined the deceitful. He explained that it was common on his plantation for multiple families to share a cabin and how those close quarters could breed mistrust. Stroyer noted that if one family stole food from their owner they had to conceal it, or eat the contraband meal at a friend’s home, “for fear of being betrayed by the other family.” Stroyer knew one enslaved man who stole and butchered a hog, only to be caught by an enslaved person he lived with. That enslaved man told the overseer, and the thief was flogged. As revenge, the man slaughtered a second hog several months later and concealed the carcass amid the traitorous family’s belongings. He proceeded to tell the overseer, who now whipped the other man for supposedly being a thief. This revenge served to physically punish the enslaved man for having informed on him, but it also potentially helped damage the trust the overseer had in the man who initially “betrayed” his neighbor.

According to Stroyer revenge was not the only way to address trust issues that arose among members of the enslaved community; they also had multiple strategies for “detecting thieves” or dishonesty. If someone in the community was believed to have stolen something from another enslaved person, a Bible (or a sieve, if there was no Bible available) was suspended from string and carried by four men who came to each cabin to accuse the head of household of the theft. If the object “was to turn around on the string,” that was accepted as conclusive “proof” that the enslaved person in question was guilty. Because this process was repeated three times at each cabin for accuracy, it could take weeks to identify the perpetrator on a large plantation. Stroyer recalled that if the Bible or sieve turned and the accused person did not confess, the defendant was required to admit to anything he had stolen “previously … or that he had thought of stealing at the time when the chicken or the dress was stolen” and to provide restoration. In this way the ritual sought to redress a particular theft, it attempted to resolve other cases, and it was used to identify, and perhaps even prevent, deceitful “thought[s].”

The last technique for “detecting thieves” was learned from enslaved parents. Stroyer explained that since enslaved people believed that a person had to confess any dishonesty before dying to avoid damnation, “graveyard dust” was seen as the “truest” substance to use in rituals for identifying robbers. He described how “dust would be taken from the grave of a person who had died” recently and mixed with water. The accused thief was told that if they were innocent they could drink the water without harm, but if they were guilty and they drank from the bottle they would “burn … in fire and brimstone.” If the accused was indeed the culprit they would admit “it rather than take the water” and then be required to pay damages to their victim, providing four chickens for every bird taken, for example. If they could not repay the debt they had to swear never to steal in the future.⁸⁸ This illustrates how hard enslaved communities worked to root out deceit, even if it took an entire month to determine guilt. The lengths some enslaved people were willing to go to is evidence of how seriously they took these transgressions and how committed they were to uncovering the truth, preventing future theft, and mitigating distrust within their community.

Douglass wrote at length about how important trusting other enslaved people was to surviving slavery. Though Douglass spoke of how enslaved people sometimes betrayed their fellow bondsmen, he was also intent on proving that trust flourished in enslaved communities. In his second autobiography Douglass reminisced about the enslaved people he befriended while they were hired out together. He refuted the notion that distrust was rife in enslaved communities, observing that though people often “charge slaves with great treachery toward each other, and … believe them incapable of confiding in each other,” this was not his experience, for his enslaved friends “were as true as steel.” As a result of the trust and affection in this close-knit group, none of them took “advantage … of each other; as is sometimes the case where slaves are situated as [they] were” and there was “no tattling” to their owner. Douglass does not say what came first, friendship or trust, so it is not clear exactly how these men were able to join in amity and common cause rather than be divided by informing. But it is clear that these bonds of confidence provided the men with emotional support, enabling them to contemplate escape together.⁸⁹ Once again the stakes of trust were thrown into sharp relief: no less than love and revolution were possible when enslaved people could unite without mistrust.

Still, the constant tribulations of slavery meant that even the most trusting relationships between enslaved people could be built on shaky foundations. Douglass wrote wistfully about an enslaved man named Sandy who took Douglass into his home after an escape attempt, even though Sandy would have been brutally whipped or “worse” if his complicity had been discovered. Douglass admired Sandy’s bravery and selflessness in helping a “brother bondman.” Throughout the passage Douglass displayed his gratitude to Sandy, underlining how trustworthy Sandy was and how much some enslaved people were willing to gamble on their comrades. Perhaps because Sandy had proven himself as a confidant, when Douglass and other enslaved men contemplated running away together, they invited Sandy to join them. As the plan developed, however, he decided not to go, and before long their plot was uncovered. Because Douglass and his other conspirators trusted each other so much it was all the more shocking when it became clear that someone had given away their plans. They vowed to find out “who had betrayed” them, but while they might obviously have suspected one another of informing, Douglass swore that their “confidence in each other was unshaken.” Douglass ruefully noted that all evidence pointed to Sandy as the “betrayer.” In spite of this, Douglass claimed that he and his fellow conspirators “loved” Sandy too much to give credence to this theory and still believed that another spy must be responsible.⁹⁰ This demonstrated the strength of their confidence in one another; they continued to believe Sandy rather than the accusations against him. Douglass’s hesitance to condemn someone who had been loyal in the past is a testament to the fact that slavery could kindle mistrust, but it also cemented lasting bonds of confidence that could be difficult to break once they had been established.

Trust and Freedom

Slaveholders and enslaved people knew that trust could be a life-and-death issue, but enslaved people were also keenly aware that trust and loyalty were critical factors in successfully escaping from slavery. Many enslaved people contemplated fleeing slavery on their own because of concerns about being betrayed by allies like Sandy. But even enslaved people who ran away alone were faced with questions of whether or not to trust other enslaved people, White people, or free people of color in order to escape. This was the quandary for Northup when he decided to try to write to former associates in the North to tell them that he had been enslaved. To do so Northup had to find a person who could safely send the letter, leading him to initially ask his neighbor Armsby. Because Northup feared that Armsby could betray him, Northup bribed the man and did not disclose the letter’s contents. Northup’s fears were justified, as Armsby told Northup’s owner that one of the men he enslaved had asked him to mail a letter. This left Northup despondent, both because his letter attempt had failed and because he knew building trust was vital to his plan but he did not know if he could be trustful in the future. This sheds light on the decision process for enslaved people when determining if they could trust a White person or not, especially when freedom hung in the balance. The incident also shows that while Northup thought money would buy Armsby’s trust, it may only have kindled the man’s suspicions. Money could accompany trust but not necessarily forge it or replace it.

Though Northup felt hopeless after Armsby’s betrayal, he was able to use the breach of confidence as a learning experience for future escape attempts. Later that summer a White man named Bass, who was openly opposed to slavery, came to stay at the Epps plantation. With time Northup “became convinced he was a man in whom [Northup] could confide,” but his misadventure with Armsby led him to be much more “cautious” about approaching Bass. After watching Bass for days, waiting for an opportune time when the two men were alone, Northup finally confessed to Bass that he was a free man from New York and that he hoped to get a letter to his Northern friends. Northup begged Bass not to divulge his story, and Bass promised Northup “he would keep every word” that Northup spoke “a profound secret,” providing Northup with many “assurances … that [he] should not be betrayed.” Eventually Bass sent the letter, setting into motion Northup’s eventual emancipation.⁹¹ While Bass’s antislavery statements were a clue that he might be trusted to help an enslaved person what mattered most to Northup in this equation was the time he spent observing Bass, learning if he was sincere.⁹²

Even enslaved people who tried to escape alone sometimes had to improvise and place their trust in other enslaved people who became apprised of their plan. During one runaway attempt Sella Martin fled to the plantation where his mother lived, but another enslaved man saw him creeping through the slave quarters that night. Having been caught in a dangerous position Martin hazarded his luck by confiding in the stranger that he was a runaway and that he was there only to see his mother. Martin noticed that the man appeared aloof, but he agreed to bring Martin’s mother to him. Waiting in the dark for him to come back, Martin wrote that “it was an age of anxiety,” as he wondered if the enslaved man had “gone to betray” him. As time passed Martin feared that the man “must be informing his master.” To quell his apprehension during his seemingly interminable wait, Martin reminded himself of the man’s straightforward, “honest way” which made him believe that the enslaved man “was not a traitor.” Indeed, the man returned with Martin’s mother, and the two were reunited for several hours.⁹³ Having been betrayed by another enslaved person before, and with so much to risk, it is little wonder that Martin worried that the man was “informing” on him. Faced with the option of trusting the man or running without seeing his mother Martin assured himself that he had correctly read the man’s character: therefore he could be trusted. Nevertheless, his concerns while waiting underscore both the dangers of trusting other enslaved people and also what was possible if trust could be built, even briefly.

It is little surprise that enslaved people who betrayed runaways were reviled by authors of slave narratives. Stroyer observed that while enslaved people often aided runaways in their flight, if a fugitive encountered enslaved people who were known informants then the runaway “would mob or kill” any double-crossers.⁹⁴ Bibb revealed his aversion to such traitors, and how they were recruited, after he was captured escaping. Because he was a notorious runaway, local slaveholders interrogated Bibb about the “whereabouts” of other fugitives. Through this process he learned that he had been exposed by two Black men he met in Cincinnati who were paid to befriend him before relaying information about him for a reward. His inquisitors offered him the same deal, promising him enough money to buy his family’s freedom if he would help identify and catch other runaways. Bibb refused, proclaiming that though he cherished his family and longed for them to be free he was “unwilling” to achieve that “by betraying and destroying the liberty and happiness of others who have never offended” him.⁹⁵ Though Stroyer and Bibb both conceded that there were those who were all too willing to serve as spies for slaveholders, they also insisted that many enslaved people would not agree to serve as turncoats.

These passages highlight the extent to which trust was contingent on space and how much enslaved people’s mobility hinged on being trustworthy. Enslaved people understood that how much their owner trusted them could be measured by how far they were allowed to travel from their owner’s home and how often.⁹⁶ As Martin learned, though his owner generally had confidence in him he refused Martin’s request to visit his mother sixty miles away.⁹⁷ That slaveholder quantified how much he trusted Martin, and that trust had geographic limits. Jacobs’s brother William deduced that seeming trustworthy could lead to increased mobility and thereby could facilitate escape. Mr. Sands repeatedly praised him for being “faithful” for not running away as they traveled through the North. William relied on that shored-up trust when he left their hotel on the last morning of their tour carrying his trunk. When Sands inquired about his plans, William replied that he was going to trade his old trunk for new luggage. Sands did not question this errand and even offered William money to purchase a new suitcase. According to the slaveholder William “thanked” him but declined and left. Little did Sands know that the “shabby” trunk was filled with all of William’s belongings, and that he was escaping in plain sight.⁹⁸ William was able to run away because he was trusted to come and go freely, but his plan would have been impossible for an enslaved person who was not considered honest or loyal.

Enslaved people who were perceived as untrustworthy recognized the greater mobility permitted to faithful enslaved people, and some saw this as reason enough to at least perform a semblance of loyalty. Douglass acknowledged that “a slave who is considered trust-worthy” could persuade their owner to hire them out, permitting them to leave their owner’s home to work. In return for giving up most or all of their weekly wages, the enslaved worker could usually “dispose of his time as he likes.” Enslaved people who were trusted were able to use that time to earn more money, raise crops, or visit loved ones. Unfortunately for him, Douglass “was far from being a trustworthy slave.” Being viewed as honest and loyal could win an enslaved person a modicum of control over the terms of their labor, and diligent work could also provide the means for enslaved people to seem more trustworthy. When Douglass realized that his “insolent answers” and “sulky deportment” were raising his owner’s “suspicion that [he] might be cherishing disloyal purposes,” Douglass made a show of tirelessly laboring in the hopes that this would allay the slaveholder’s “suspicion.” Douglass’s efforts paid off, as he was able to mask his “disloyal purposes” with cheery industriousness, convincing the slaveholder that Douglass had never been happier when in reality he “was planning … escape.”⁹⁹

Mobility was linked to trustworthiness and loyalty in part because of broader concerns about building trust with strangers.¹⁰⁰ Slaveholders and enslaved people developed a variety of methods for discerning or concealing deceit in their daily interactions, but beyond the plantation, different tactics were necessary to establish trust and truth. While a slaveholder might learn through time and observation which enslaved people they could trust, in the public spaces of the antebellum South all Black people were assumed to be enslaved and suspected of being runaways. This is most evident in descriptions of how White people, including children, would interrogate any Black person they saw alone on a street or road.¹⁰¹ But at times members of the planter class were in a predicament: how to win the trust of a Black person they did not know. This was also a question for enslaved people, especially runaways, as they debated whether to try to create trust with or lie to strangers they encountered. Even before James W. C. Pennington was caught trying to run away, he agonized over what to tell anyone who might stop him on his way. He knew that if he admitted he was a fugitive he would be swiftly returned to his owner and punished. Hoping to avoid that fate, he realized his remaining options were to remain silent or “tell an untruth.” Pennington decided upon the latter, so when he was apprehended by several White men he “resolved … to insist that [he] was free.” They did not believe him, however, so they bound him and set out to find a magistrate to hear his case.¹⁰²

As they traveled the men tried to wheedle the truth out of Pennington, alternating between inducements and threats in an effort to gain his confidence and determine whether he was honest. When they saw that Pennington was having difficulty walking with his hands tied, they unbound him, hoping this small act would make him trust them. He explained that after he was “untied … they began to parley,” as one of the men told Pennington that if he had escaped it would behoove him to confess, for he would receive “better” treatment. Pennington, undaunted, swore that he was free.¹⁰³ Clearly the men thought they were negotiating, and that promising a lighter punishment in return for confessing was an enticing proposition. However, Pennington no doubt saw the offer for what it was, a thinly veiled threat of what would happen if he did not admit he was a runaway. Pennington’s account illuminates just how much the scripts enslaved people relied on to perform trustworthiness depended on mutual familiarity.

With so much mistrust hanging over interactions between Black people and White people in the liminal spaces outside of plantations, a runaway was faced with the dilemma of how to quickly secure the trust that was supposed to take a lifetime of ostensibly faithful labor to accrue. As Martin tried to escape North, he discovered that unsolicited trustworthy actions could function as currency, even in a land of strangers. Martin described how he encountered a “Californian” on a steamboat headed North whose friends “were being cheated out of their money by cardsharpers” early in the trip. Martin told the Californian about the con men before his friends lost more money, and as a result of this altruistic act the stranger felt obliged to Martin. Luckily for Martin, he ran into this man in an Illinois railway station after he was told that a Black person could not buy a rail ticket unless someone could “vouch for their freedom.” The Californian took Martin aside and demanded to know if he was indeed a free man. Martin vowed that he was and showed him some free papers he had falsely obtained, and the Californian proceeded to buy Martin his train ticket to true freedom.¹⁰⁴ Because Martin had gone out of his way to be honest before, the man believed him now, enough to put his own reputation on the line by vouching for him.

Nothing illustrates the challenges runaways faced to establish trust with strangers better than the critical moments in many slave narratives when fugitives were forced to confide in or rely on free people, including White people, in order to escape slavery. The stakes were high, and secrecy was imperative, so confiding in a stranger while in flight from slavery might lead to freedom or to capture and reenslavement.

Because of what they were risking, and because of the caution with which many authors approached escape, these scenes shed light on the process of how enslaved people ascertained if someone was trustworthy. After a night spent in the cold William Wells Brown had to overcome feelings of mistrust to seek someone who would shelter a fugitive. He initially hoped to be harbored by “some colored person, or, if not, someone who was not a slaveholder: for I had an idea that I should know a slaveholder as far as I could see him.” Brown hid when a man approached who “looked too genteel,” and he eventually flagged down another White man who passed by only after discerning from his less “genteel” appearance that he was likely not a wealthy planter.¹⁰⁵ His gamble paid off, as the man was a Quaker who concealed Brown in his house. Away from their owner’s home, and all that was familiar, runaways like Brown might have to trust White people but were still hesitant to trust anyone they suspected was a member of the planter class. If forced to confide in a White person, the goal was to find someone poor, an identity that Brown believed could be gleaned from visual signifiers, which he hoped would make them more sympathetic and more likely to help him.

Slave narratives indicate that mistrust, especially of White people, lingered for many fugitives long after they reached free soil. While recounting the rush of mixed emotions that he experienced upon reaching New York, Douglass shared that his mantra remained “trust no man!” It may have been a self-fulfilling prophecy, as he “saw in every white man an enemy, and in almost every colored man cause for distrust.” Douglass still feared that any White person and many Black people might give away his plans and condemn him to enslavement once more.¹⁰⁶ Ellen Craft felt similar suspicions when the Crafts reached Philadelphia and were taken in by a Quaker. Ellen was initially at ease with the Quaker because he “was not of the fairest complexion,” so Ellen concluded that he was also a person of color. When she realized that he was White William tried to dispel her concerns, but she responded that she had no “confidence whatever in white people” because she feared they intended to deceive the Crafts, capture them, and return them to their slaveholder for a reward. Eventually she was reassured by William and the Quaker, and the experience helped convince her “that there are good and bad persons of every shade of complexion.”¹⁰⁷ For enslaved people who had been inculcated into the emotional hierarchies of slavery, it was difficult to shed the idea that White people could not be trusted. That Douglass and the Crafts were so apprehensive around people they met in free states delineates how deeply enslaved people were ingrained with mistrust and how that suspicion could hinder efforts to construct new affective relations.

Even after they were free, formerly enslaved people sought to repudiate the stereotype that enslaved people were inherently deceitful. This became a subtext of slave narratives, in which formerly enslaved authors repeatedly insisted that they had been “faithful” or “loyal,” and they gave impassioned defenses of any lies that they had told while in bondage.¹⁰⁸ Former Georgia slave Harry McMillan stated in 1863 that dishonesty was strategic, as enslaved people “learned to talk false to keep the lash off their backs.”¹⁰⁹ Bibb and Jacobs wrote nearly identical rationalizations, saying that “deception” or “cunning” was “the only weapon” available to enslaved people.¹¹⁰ In spite of the way that they framed lying as a justifiable tool for the dispossessed, Jacobs clarified that she hated being dishonest; forced to lie once she reached New York as a fugitive, she did so regretfully, “reluctant to resort to subterfuges.”¹¹¹ Beyond refuting the convention that enslaved people were dishonest, formerly enslaved writers may also have felt it necessary to explain any deceptions from their past to prove that they were reliable narrators.¹¹²

The number of slave narratives that began or concluded with authenticating documents, often by White editors, also suggests that publishers and audiences believed that formerly enslaved people’s stories needed to be substantiated. Northup defended his own authorial integrity, introducing his text by explaining that his objective was “to give a candid and truthful statement of facts,” to tell his “story … without exaggeration.”¹¹³ But most slave narratives included excerpted letters from White acquaintances or other documents to “corroborate” their accounts.¹¹⁴ George Thompson opened Grandy’s narrative by describing Grandy’s “unsurpassed faithfulness” and asserting that he had “entire confidence” in what he called Grandy’s “artless tale.” Such letters provided credibility by association, insinuating that the reader could trust the author of the slave narrative because the White editor or acquaintance did. Thompson provided two different arguments for why Grandy could be trusted. First, he assured the reader of Grandy’s integrity, then he claimed that Grandy was incapable of guile, as evidenced by his supposedly “artless tale.” This enabled the reader to proceed “with entire confidence” that Grandy’s story, though incredible, was true.¹¹⁵ A review in the abolitionist paper the Anti-Slavery Advocate praised Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl for its “truthfulness and integrity,” hinting that the emphasis on reliability was not just for the peace of mind of readers, but that slave narratives were of little use as abolitionist texts if they were not considered credible.¹¹⁶

The belief that enslaved people could not be trusted even had far-reaching impacts on formerly enslaved people. Because North Carolina law required recently manumitted people to leave the state, Lunsford Lane had to seek special permission to stay in North Carolina after he was freed so he could purchase his family. This required him to obtain letters from White people attesting to his character. One man, known to him through his former owner, wrote an 1840 letter describing Lane as “prompt, obedient and faithful.” The man also wrote a petition to the North Carolina legislature in which he praised Lane for his fidelity.¹¹⁷ In order to thrive as a free Black person in the South, one still had to prove they were trustworthy and loyal to members of the planter class.

* * *

In the antebellum South mistrust simmered beneath the surface of almost every interaction between slaveholders and enslaved people. But with so much to risk for both groups, there were also incentives to find strategies for building trust or at least feigning it. The forced proximity of slavery may not have forged emotional intimacy, but the dynamic meant that slaveholders had to trust enslaved people with property (including the enslaved themselves) and with their own lives. Meanwhile, the emotional politics of slavery dictated that enslaved people had many reasons to be mistrustful of slaveholders, and there were few methods for compelling owners to be honest. Even after they shed their shackles newly freed people discovered that liberty did not free them from being suspicious of White people or dispel the stereotype that people of African descent were prone to untruths. An untrusting intuition helped many enslaved people survive bondage, and escape to freedom, but that deeply ingrained mistrust could prove to be an obstacle when trying to navigate life outside of the emotional politics of the South.

The letters written on Lunsford Lane’s behalf, more than anything, highlight both the value that White people in the antebellum South placed on trust, and the anxieties they harbored about enslaved people that could not be made faithful. The ramifications of these fears and that mistrust would be felt for generations to come. Slaveholders recognized that loyalty and honesty were more easily feigned than compelled. When trust between slaveholders and enslaved people broke down, then scripts failed, promises held no sway, and loyalty was not sufficient currency. If enslaved people could not be induced to be faithful and trusted through rewards, then slaveholders would resort to punishment.